We live in an age where every founder believes the path to credibility is to sprinkle "AI" over their pitch deck like cheap parmesan on boxed spaghetti. Investors eat it up, founders feel validated, and within six months, another lifeless SaaS "platform" enters the graveyard of hype-driven half-products.
But let me tell you something that might sting:
Your startup doesn't need AI. It needs a Bash script.
Not TensorFlow. Not GPT wrappers. Not a half-baked "AI-powered" dashboard that just calls an API and outputs JSON into a table. No - your first milestone isn't building a foundation model, it's figuring out whether anyone even needs what you're offering. That doesn't require AI. It requires duct tape, glue, and the humble Unix philosophy.
The Bash Script Test
Here's the simplest litmus test for whether your startup is solving a real problem or indulging in tech cosplay:
Can you solve the core of the problem with a Bash script?
If the answer is yes, congratulations - you've got something worth exploring. If the answer is no, chances are you're trying to invent a problem that only exists to justify an "AI startup."
Take examples from the real world:
Airbnb didn't start with machine learning–driven pricing optimization. It started with a scrappy website and hosts uploading photos.
Stripe didn't start by training reinforcement learning agents on fraud detection. It started with a couple of devs wiring up payment flows with ugly code and better documentation.
Dropbox didn't start with distributed consensus algorithms. It started with a simple demo video and a hacked-together folder sync tool.
All of those could have been prototyped with a few shell scripts and cron jobs. And they were - because the point wasn't to flex computational horsepower. The point was to solve a problem so obvious that people were willing to forgive how ugly the solution looked in its early form.
AI as a Distraction
Most "AI startups" today aren't really startups. They're half-hearted wrappers around OpenAI, Anthropic, or HuggingFace APIs. At best, you've got a thin layer of UI around somebody else's core competency. At worst, you're a feature masquerading as a company.
Founders throw AI into the mix not because the product demands it but because they assume it makes them look sophisticated.
But sophistication without necessity is just waste.
AI is heavy. It introduces costs you're not ready for:
- Compute bills that eat your runway faster than you can say "seed extension."
- Latency issues that frustrate users when your app feels sluggish compared to a local script.
- Model dependence on external providers who can pull the rug out at any moment by raising API prices or rate-limiting.
If you're pre-PMF, AI is the last thing you should be thinking about. A startup's first responsibility is not cutting-edge research. It's finding out whether the world cares if you exist.
And that can be done with Bash.
Bash as a Startup Philosophy
When I say "Bash," I don't literally mean you should build your whole product in shell scripts.
I mean you should embrace the spirit of Bash:
- Glue together existing tools rather than reinventing wheels.
- Automate the boring parts instead of prematurely optimizing for scale.
- Value composability over sophistication.
- Ship ugly solutions that work today instead of fantasizing about elegant ones that never arrive.
A Bash script can scrape data, transform it, run cron jobs, and stitch together a minimum viable workflow. And if you can't make a workflow valuable enough to sell with that level of tooling, you don't need a neural net - you need a new idea.
The Bash MVP vs. The AI MVP
Let's compare two approaches to building a startup MVP-
The AI MVP
- Spend months training or integrating models.
- Burn through credits on GPU providers.
- Build an elaborate abstraction layer around the model.
- Struggle with unpredictable outputs and model drift.
- Ship a half-working demo that impresses no one.
The Bash MVP
-Write a script that scrapes a CSV of relevant data.
-Automate sending an email when certain conditions are met.
-Use grep, sed, and awk to massage results into something usable.
-Cron job it into existence.
-Demo something functional in days, not months.
The AI MVP burns money and time, often without clarity on whether the problem even matters. The Bash MVP forces you to focus on the essence of the problem. If a customer perks up at the Bash version, congratulations - you've found a vein of gold. Now you can justify sophistication.
But Isn't AI the Future?
Sure. AI is transformative. But it's not your transformation until you've earned the right to wield it.
AI should not be your foundation. It should be your lever. Once you've proven people care about your product, then - and only then - does AI make sense as an accelerant.
That's how real companies use it:
- Uber didn't need AI to get cars on the road, but it used AI later to optimize routing and pricing.
- Shopify didn't need AI to get merchants online, but it uses AI now to recommend products and detect fraud.
- Netflix didn't need AI to stream movies, but it layered on recommendation engines after they had millions of subscribers.
AI shines at scale. Bash shines at zero to one.
Why Founders Overcomplicate
There's a psychological trap at work. Founders fear being seen as "too simple." They equate complexity with legitimacy. Investors reinforce this by asking about "moats" and "differentiation," which drives founders to bolt AI onto everything as a fake moat.
But the strongest moat isn't an algorithm. It's traction. If you're solving something people scream for, no one cares if you did it with Bash scripts duct-taped to a Raspberry Pi.
Complexity is often a form of procrastination.
It's easier to tinker with model parameters than to cold-email 50 potential customers and ask, "Would you pay for this?" A Bash script forces you to confront reality quickly. That's why most people avoid it.
A Bash Script That Became a Business
Plenty of real startups grew from Bash-level beginnings.
Take Zapier. Before it was a billion-dollar workflow automation platform, its earliest prototype was essentially glorified API glue - a collection of scripts connecting one app to another. Nothing sexy. No AI. Just the simple promise of "what if your stuff talked to each other?"
Or take Basecamp. Their philosophy has always been "do less, better." They've resisted the AI hype train, and their customers love them for their opinionated, human-first approach. Their moat isn't machine learning. It's taste.
These companies proved value with simplicity first. Then they scaled.
Practical Advice: How to Embrace the Bash Mindset
Identify the painful manual workflow.
Every real startup begins here.
Find the spreadsheet, the inbox, or the repetitive task people hate.
Script it once. Use whatever duct tape works. If you can automate one painful part of someone's life, you've created value.
Show, don't pitch. Instead of saying "AI will optimize your workflow," say "Here, I wrote a script that saves you three hours a week." Customers believe in outcomes, not jargon.
Scale by demand, not hype. If ten people are screaming for your script, wrap it in a UI.
If a hundred want it, consider infrastructure. If a thousand want it, then consider whether AI could make it more powerful.
Stay allergic to fake complexity. Whenever you're tempted to add AI, ask yourself: is the core problem solved by a simpler tool? If yes, stop.
Opinion: AI Startups Are Mostly Vanity Projects
Here's the harsh truth: most AI startups will die because they are vanity projects. They are not born from pain points. They are born from fear of irrelevance. Founders see AI eating the world and assume they must cling to it or perish.
But building a startup isn't about clinging. It's about anchoring. Anchoring yourself to something so viscerally valuable that people can't imagine going back to life without it.
If your product requires AI on day one, it's either not a startup - it's research - or it's snake oil.
The Bash Ethic Is the Anti-Hype Ethic
There's a beauty in small, sharp tools that do one thing well. That beauty has been buried under the avalanche of "AI-powered everything." But the companies that last aren't the ones that follow hype. They're the ones that stand apart.
The Bash script ethic is about being brutally honest: solve one real problem, as fast and ugly as possible. If the world doesn't care, move on. If it does, refine.
That honesty is more radical than AI.
Closing Thoughts
Your startup doesn't need AI.
It needs proof that someone cares. And the quickest path to that proof isn't a transformer architecture or an API call - it's a Bash script.
The real flex isn't building a "deep tech" demo nobody wants. The real flex is writing a twenty-line shell script that someone pays you to run every week. From there, you can scale. From there, you can layer on intelligence. But don't confuse the accelerant with the spark.
So the next time you feel the urge to jam "AI" into your slide deck, ask yourself: have I earned it? Or do I still need to write a Bash script first?
Because if you haven't, the truth is harsh but liberating: you don't have an AI company. You don't even have a company yet. You've got an idea. And Bash is how you find out if it's worth anything.
Want to see how deep this rabbit hole goes? I put together a $5 pack of 20 Bash Scripts That Will Replace Your Startup Idea - real, copy-paste scripts that do what most SaaS apps charge you monthly for. Grab it here.
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